Former minister Chris Bryant: French is a useless language

A former Foreign Office minister described the French language as "useless"
as he called for more young people to learn Mandarin and Arabic.

Chris Bryant, who served as minister for Europe under Gordon Brown, used a speech in the Commons to highlight the waning value of the French tongue, which has traditionally been the first foreign language taught to British schoolchildren.

Mr Bryant, now a shadow Foreign Office minister, said that young people should be pointed towards languages that were more useful for business.

He told MPs: "Unless we have sufficient numbers of people who speak modern foreign languages – and not just the useless modern foreign languages like French ..."

Amid Tory protests that this was "insulting" to our near neighbours, Mr Bryant said: "I've said this to the French. I think they realise there are problems."

He defended his remark, insisting that while French had been the "most useful language to use because it was the diplomatic language", things had changed over the last 30 to 40 years and now "it certainly isn't".

He said the most significant languages to speak now, aside from English, were Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic.

Figures released earlier this year showed that the popularity of French and other European languages among secondary school pupils had fallen to a new low, with fewer than half of teenagers gaining a good GCSE grade.

Before losing power the Labour government pledged to make languages compulsory for all seven- to 11-year-olds from 2011.

In January Ed Balls, then Schools Secretary, said that all secondary school pupils should have the chance to study Mandarin.